Students in the International Women's Human Rights Law Clinic (IWHR) engage in change-lawyering through litigation and advocacy, locally and globally. In conjunction with women's and LGBTQ advocates, human rights lawyers, and grass-roots organizations in the United States and abroad, we advocate on behalf of individual clients and groups in the context of promoting change in both national and international human rights law.
Widely recognized for its expertise and contributions to gender jurisprudence and practice of human rights, the IWHR clinic enables students to engage in cutting edge work under close clinical supervision. We maintain an eclectic docket of cases and projects to provide both in-depth and broad experience in human rights practice for everyone. Our goal is to develop a sound understanding of international human rights, as well as sharpen lawyering skills necessary for effective law reform-oriented advocacy work applicable in both U.S. and international contexts.
With domestic or international partners, we engage international and regional human rights and other law- and policy-making institutions to redefine and implement human rights to stop gender and sexualized violence, and to advance reproductive and sexual rights, economic and social rights, and women's participation generally. In the United States, we represent immigrant domestic workers and other victims of human rights abuses with international and domestic claims in U.S. courts, as well as file amicus curiae briefs in domestic cases with significant and otherwise overlooked international dimensions.
The field of women's human rights enables students to learn how to identify and analyze the gender-specific dimensions of a situation and challenge apparently neutral, but exclusionary policies as well as human rights frameworks. This approach provides a transferable experience of simultaneously working with the diverse perspectives of the marginalized while focusing specifically on gender issues which are intersectional, incorporating diversities in terms of race, ethnicity, geopolitical context, economic and other status, including discrimination based on non-hetero-normative sexual and gender identities. By addressing problems through the lens of human rights, IWHR interns build capacity to use international human rights frameworks and institutions to reexamine and challenge the narrower rights approach of the U.S. Constitution in domestic and international fora while developing lawyering skills applicable purely to U.S. law reform efforts.
IWHR provides a sound basis for students who aspire immediately or in the future to engage in human rights work internationally at the same time as the importance of this training for domestic work across many fields-criminal justice, legal services, economic and social policies, women's, LGBTQ and race discrimination issues, environmental justice, governmental and corporate responsibility-has grown exponentially given the degree to which social justice advocates are turning to human rights as an alternative to our shrinking constitution and legal protections and are developing new organizations and coalitions. Read More
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